Ciro Alegria while waiting to be shot

Ciro Alegria

The most important American Indian novel - "The world is wide and others' (1941) was written by a Peruvian Ciro Alegría, who years earlier had survived a massacre, had escaped a firing squad, he spent several years in prison, and had been banished after most of his life could not return home because a succession of dictatorships always stopped him.

On Christmas Eve 1931, Ciro Alegría, then a boy of 22, was at the local APRA in its home city, Trujillo, to assist in food distribution to poor children. He was accompanied by his friend, the painter Mariano Alcántara was more or less the same age.

APRA was a political and social movement that was rising up a few years for major structural changes and propose the union of the Latin American countries against U.S. imperialism. In agriculture, Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, their leader, proposed the expropriation of large estates, a feudal relic in which the landowner was lord of the lives and destinies of his men.

A few hours after the distribution of bonuses, Ciro and Mariano drinking with fellow traditional hot chocolate that night. The young writer's eyes caught the attention of a beautiful classmate and invited her out for walks in the adjoining Plaza de Armas in Trujillo, Peru's largest. That would save her life.

When there were a few minutes before midnight, a truck with soldiers parked in front of the local party. The newcomers were carrying machine guns. Some were posted outside the door. A group of them entered the room making shots left and right. There were dozens of people. Most of those were, indeed, children and housewives.

Meanwhile, Mariano Alcántara, tired of waiting for his friend, had gone to sleep under the desk in the administrative office. When soldiers entered shooting, believed that one of his rounds had settled. It was he who many years later in our history would tell me Trujillo.

In July the following year in the same city explode a revolution that was destined to be the starting point of a formidable social insurgency in Peru. It is normal for young university Ciro Alegria participate. The rebels seized the garrison town for a week and installed a popular government. However, the armed forces besieged Trujillo by air, sea and land and, after many unequal battle, crushed the rebellion. Thousands of trujillanos were summarily shot against the walls of the ancient pre-Hispanic city of Chan Chan.

Cyrus may be one of them, but death was not yet on their lists. After walking persecuted kills balance, was finally caught. A court martial decided his execution. In prison, he waited for months to comply with the fateful decision.

When I met him, decades later, Joy told me that there, between dreams and in the midst of the four prison walls, he saw Rosendo and the various characters of his epic novel "The world is wide and strange." "I was dying to get out to write" I said .-.

The work, published nine years later, the Indians of the Andean community must face the invasion of their lands by the landowners who protect the armed forces and laws of the republic. Only nature mysticism and gives them a tremendous resistance to ancestral Indian community will continue its struggle. International award winning and published in 1941, this novel would also mean the first intake of the figure of the Indian in Peruvian literature. Before she was published, the Indians had not been deemed worthy to enter the pages still colonial Peruvian authors.

A Cyrus was commuted the death sentence for a prison that he suffered some years and then exile in Chile. In that country would be published "The golden snake" (1935) and "hungry dogs" (1939). "The world is wide and outside," published in almost all languages, later became a novel world.

Not even the fame won by these events could serve to return to their country. Successive dictatorships was prevented or made Peru a very dangerous place for a novelist who finally went to the United States and dedicated himself to a university professorship there.

After a long exile and after a few decades back. A massive heart attack killed him in 1967. They had not done away with the gun of the irrational, not the troubled years of persecution and martyrdom, or the possibility of being shot. Neither would get the death because their readers these days we are celebrating the centenary of his birth and eternity of the characters nor the novel he revealed that he thought as he waited to be shot.

3 comments

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  By JULIO ATENCIO, November 8, 2009 @ 6:56

  Years of idealism and commitment, the revolution of conscience. There are some reports that would be good to verify that not only the dictatorship but also persigio To Joy covertly the same APRA

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  By Deborah, November 11, 2009 @ 6:51 pm

  Fantastic author, the best Peruvian author. Thanks for the note.

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  By alberto moya obese, December 24, 2009 @ 9:59

  Eduardo:
  What is said by Julio Atencio me to not ignore his words and say it is true that APRA chased Ciro Alegria, que3 only she had another look. When Ciro Alegria military decided Popular Action, a reformist party came qu left APRA, already had abandoned the ideals for which killed thousands of men of the people in Trujillo and elsewhere in the country, the novelist was invited to give a conference in the Auditorium of the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo. And surprise, the university APRA then organized a counter-demonstration against Cyrus. And some of its intellectuals dared to say that more words, fewer words, the great novels referred to Eduardo Gonzalez Viana were written by his wife and not him. It was at the time that Edward and Walter Palacios studying at The University, to which I belonged as a student. I think the time has come to say as they have been and are things in my coun, Peru.

  Alberto Moya Obeso. Professor, National University of Trujillo, Peru.

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